Wednesday, July 27, 2011

"By rights it is you, who are in the prime of all your inner powers, who ought to continue the war against the enemies of truth and not to shrink from the task. Thus we fathers may be gladdened by the noble efforts of our children. For this is what the law of nature presupposes. But since you have turned your ranks and direct toward us the assaults of those darts which are hurled by the opponents of truth, and bid us old men to quench with the shield of faith their 'hot, burning coals' and their missiles sharpened by knowledge (as they falsely call it), we accept the challenge."

Gregory of Nyssa, "An answer to Ablabius: that we should not think of saying there are three gods," ed. and trans. Cyril C. Richardson. Christology of the later Fathers, Library of Christian classics 3, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy in collaboration with Cyril C. Richardson (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1954), 256.

"16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom's present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C."